


Till the End

by drowsyivy



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-01 10:53:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18798910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drowsyivy/pseuds/drowsyivy
Summary: Naruto, Gaara and Haku discuss the War That Hadn't Happened in Canon, but Shikako is a bit lost in her thoughts.





	Till the End

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry, this is very rough, and I will definitely polish this at a later date! Right now though it's a few ideas I had tossing around that I couldn't get around to developing bc unexpected work, oops. Probably there's a lot of stuff here that's completely wrong as well

As the storm continued to thunder, Shikako trudged slowly through the muddy streets. Though it was only early afternoon, the clouds were thick enough that it felt like night time. The merchant stands on the sides were missing, and few people were out.

There it was: Ramen Ichiraku. It occurred to her that perhaps letting Naruto pick the location wasn’t a good idea, but still, she had to admit that she was looking forward to seeing him again. It had been over two years since he had left, after all. She opened the door, and immediately the sound of enthusiastic chattering welcomed her ears.

“...And that’s why I’m not allowed to use scissors anymore!” That sounded like an interesting story, actually. It almost made her regret the fact that she had been in her room all day working on her new sterilization seal. Then again, in the back of her mind, she knew that she had to keep moving on, she couldn’t afford to stop, because heaven knows what would have happened if she did.

Oh, crap, he doesn’t know about our last mission, does he?

Gaara snorted in response, accidentally snorting a few strands of ramen up his nose and coughing. Naruto laughed in response, retorting, “Well, you’d better believe it!”

“We do believe in you, Naruto,” Haku gently pointed out, setting his bowl of ramen soup aside. “That’s what friends are for.”

“See, Gaara? Haku believes it.” Naruto stuffed himself with another mouthful of noodles, before turning around and waving over to Shikako, shouting, “Shikako, you’re more late than Kakashi-sensei! Come over and take a seat. I’ve already told them you’re coming, so they’ll be out with a bowl for you soon!”

Well, you try being mindful of the time when you’re the reason an entire village got slaughtered, the world’s at war and your teammate is in a coma he might never wake up from, she wanted to say, almost said, but she wisely chose to suppress that thought.

Then it dawned on her; that was exactly why Kakashi-sensei was so late to everything, wasn’t it Or maybe he was just lazy? Despite having been under him for years, she still wasn’t so sure of what went on inside his head.

She ended up settling on a bland greeting, barely but genuinely smiling, “Hey Naruto, hey Gaara, hey Haku.” Lame, she thought, but it was fine.

She could remember the first time her team had met the two of them as enemies. Back in the Land of Waves, she had been able to sense the gentleness in his spirit. She had seen how he always held back, going for the less lethal option. When they had encountered Zabuza the first time and knocked him out, Haku had not killed him, as was proper to be done to a missing-nin. While part of it was that the two were working together, Shikako felt that it was more than that. At the end of the day, Haku wouldn’t have been able to kill his ally, his mentor, even if his life depended on it. When he and Sasuke had fought, he held back his attacks, even though it would have been easy for him to end Sasuke’s life then and there. Despite his insistence that he was nothing but an instrument of death, even in the heat of battle, his peace-loving nature had won out. Between that and his skills as a shinobi, Shikako held great hope in Hidden Mist’s future.

Gaara, on the other hand... had been a lot different when they first ran into each other. He, along with his two siblings, had been Hidden Sand’s hand-picked delegation to the Chuunin exams in Konoha. When she had sensed his chakra, she couldn’t help noticing how menacing and wild it was at first - that much was obvious, and no doubt even a mediocre ninja could pick up on that - but she had also sensed his fearsome determination. Later, she learned, it had been moulded into that form by his father’s various attempts on his life, all of them failing, but slowly driving the poor lad insane.

Naruto had probably sensed something off about the whole situation, too, as he had insisted on going to visit Gaara in the hospital. Actually, maybe that was all just Naruto being Naruto, but did it really matter? Seeing Naruto wear down Gaara’s fears through his sheer optimism might have left Sasuke shaking his head, but it really was something to behold. She would always be grateful for that, Naruto’s uncanny ability to make friends out of anything that had a brain and a mouth, sometimes neither.

The two had served their homelands well. It was a pity that she had to throw them into a huge war.

“-which is why, even though we’re hard-pressed for available shinobi, we’ll do our best to match your forces,” Gaara concludes. Shit, Shikako realised, she had been zoning out again. She blinked twice and, noticing the bowl of boiled egg ramen, tried to subtly grab up some noodles with her chopsticks, when Haku looked up after slurping the last bits in his bowl, his mouth opening for a reply.

“A promise to try won’t be good enough,” he objected. “Since the Mist Rebellion, we’ve been struggling to rebuild, and quite frankly, we need all the help we can get.”

“Suna isn’t exactly in the best spot, either," Gaara pointed out. “As I said, we’re not exactly thriving at the moment. But we’ll provide as much assistance for you as we can spare, you have my word on that. Now, Konoha on the other hand...” He and Haku look at Naruto and Shikako expectantly. Then, Naruto turns to her as well.

“Well, it’s not in my official capacity to make any decisions on that level,” I explained. “However, I’ll do my best to convince Tsunade-san, and then we can hold a meeting with her.”

Haku and Gaara exhaled in unison. “Well,” Gaara sighs, “that’s the best we can hope for.” I nod solemnly.

Naruto, however, grinned cheerfully. “Come on, Gaara, don’t forget that we’re friends! Even if Tsunade-san says no, we’ll still find some other way to help, believe it!”

“Of course,” Haku smiled back, stacking his empty bowl on top of the other ones. “We couldn’t ask for anything more.”

“As they say," Gaara agreed, "friends look out for each other ‘til the end.”

Shikako shuddered at the thought of finding Sasuke collapsed on the ground, tiptoeing the line between living and dead, all because a huge group of Cloud ninja had ambushed them and she couldn’t afford to turn back and help him. Slowly nodding, she silently wished that what Gaara said could be true.


End file.
